


when he comes at last

by peredhils



Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Fairy Tale Elements, Light Angst, M/M, The Last Unicorn AU, and a happy ending for good measure
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-09
Updated: 2018-10-09
Packaged: 2019-07-28 09:32:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,416
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16238891
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/peredhils/pseuds/peredhils
Summary: “Do you regret it?”The memory of Prompto, the way he was, what his father had done—it takes him, and he can’t let it go.Prompto doesn’t answer for a while. The sun continues to rise.





	when he comes at last

**Author's Note:**

> written for the wonderful, fantastic, beautiful promptis zine, [ever after](https://everafterzine.tumblr.com/)! this is one of my pride and joys and its among such incredible company in this zine. im so so proud and happy to have been featured! thank you thank you!

“I had the strangest dream.” 

He remembers the waves breaking over the jagged rocks, swallowing the remains of the castle in its great wake. 

“You were there,” he says. “You’re always there.”

* * *

 

His father tells him about them when he’s young.

_ “They look like moonlight.” _

Noctis remembers his father as he was then often. A tall and sage king, as he thought one should be. And he was so young then, too—it hadn’t lasted long. Youth bled from his father like a wound that never healed quite right. For all they knew of magic, nothing had stopped his father from falling out of time’s slow march.

It was the unicorns, he thinks. When his father talked about them, it sounded like love. Most of his life was spent watching his father lose himself to that love. It ate him up from the inside.

It started out the way he always dreamed love would—something pure, like new spring. He saw it grow to obsession, stripping him bare and stealing the years from him like time was simple currency plucked from a pocket. The man in the castle now is no longer his father, but a weathered old stranger, the only familiarity in him the desire that took him away. The castle even bore the mark of his father’s curse.

So long ago, it had started like this: after coming home from a long trip to the other sides of the world Noctis could barely imagine, his father had brought stories for gifts. Hazy tales that his father told with such care Noctis felt his own heart ache for these creatures he had never, and—if his father’s fears where true—would never, see.

Unicorns—just like dragons, witches, harpies and everything magical—were real, and they were dying. And someone had to protect them. Keep them far away, out of the reach of harm.

That’s what his father said.

* * *

 

“And what did you dream, my prince?”

His dream had been of moonlight, cradled by a vast darkness. Stars blinking in and out. An old witch’s laughter, his father screaming. A curse breaking with a falling castle. 

“That I died.” He reaches forward and takes a strand of golden hair between his fingers. “That you left me behind as a memory.”

“That dream again,” Prompto says, a smile on his face and in his voice. The sound is so beautiful it almost sends Noctis spiraling again. Again, because when they’d first met, worlds apart, Noctis felt like he’d fallen from a cliff in the most dizzying ways. It had been like magic.

“Something like it.”

He won’t tell Prompto it wasn’t quite the same one. He won’t tell him that there was a part where he and Prompto had met years before they did. Sometimes Prompto tells him he can hear his heart—something about how unicorns know who need them the most. In his dream Prompto had heard him before all that time passed. He and Prompto meet as boy and creature. Noctis would have liked to know him, then. 

He keeps this part of the dream to himself. 

They lay together in their bed, in a new castle they built together far from the sea. Not that it was anything like the castle before—it was only one in name. The place was just a small house on the outskirts of the woods, back in the place Prompto had called home when he wasn’t Noctis’ king, before Gladio had married them and they made this lost place their kingdom.

When the castle fell, he’d been alone with Gladio and Ignis on the shore. Prompto had left, unicorn once more, and he’d thought he’d lost him forever. Noctis spent months mourning the loss of his lips, his skin in the morning, the way he said Noctis’ name and that smile he took for his own after all the time they spent together in Regis’ castle.

Their time the castle—how many dragons had he saved instead of slayed? How many flowers did he plant instead of pluck? How many kindnesses did he learn to win Prompto’s heart? To have his smile in the dark, his lips and hands and neck in his bed? He did so many, and he would have done a hundred thousand more if it had meant Prompto would have stayed.

He wanted to apologize to Ignis, for having gone and done it—fallen in love with a unicorn, not in the way his father had but not so unlike him that it hadn’t stripped him of something important. He’d lost his heart to the last unicorn Regis had yet to take to the sea.

The image of Prompto, high on the ridge, looking back at him once more before leaving to return to his home, with the rest of the unicorns, flashes through his mind.

Noctis turns to him suddenly, letting the hair slip from his hands.

“Do you regret it?”

The memory of Prompto, the way he was, what his father had done—it takes him, and he can’t let it go. 

Prompto doesn’t answer for a while. The sun continues to rise.

“Which part?” he asks. He knows Prompto is not entirely mortal, he  _ knows _ , and it must ache terribly. The guilt for taking that from him feels like a splinter in his side.

“Coming back to me, after you’d left. Once the castle fell.”

Prompto looks up to him, the sheets pooling around his waist. He’s bare, the sunlight hitting him like in a painting. The silence stretches on for a long time.

* * *

 

Noctis would spend hours dreaming of a stray piece of moonlight finding its place somewhere with him. He hadn’t known it then, but he’d wanted one for himself, and when he looks back on this, he sees a little bit of his father in himself.

He saw the unicorns, each a bit of bright light, driven into the sea. The first time he saw one, he’d ran to tell Ignis, tell him that they’d come, they’d finally come. 

“Father will be so happy,” he said.

Ignis, far wiser than Noctis had been able to know at the time, smiled something sad and quiet. “Little prince, don’t fall in love with unicorns.”

For a while, Noctis listened.

* * *

 

The day the stranger and the magician came to the castle, Noctis hadn’t known, but he’d already broken his vow to Ignis. 

He saw the stranger, with long golden hair, skin pale but kissed by sun and moon and darkness and magic, and knew then that it was love.

A love that had a name, and it was Prompto. Noctis soon understands what love truly is: just like new spring, but also the heat of summer, the deep cold of winter. It was night and day and sea and desert and sky and forever. All things, wrapped up in someone so beautiful Noctis felt nothing like a prince and everything like a vessel, just waiting for Prompto to give him anything, even just a glance. 

To have Prompto love him back—that was what the bards sang of. It fueled magicians’ magic. 

For it, Noctis would face the red bull with arms wide open. 

So he does, he does.

* * *

 

“Dear heart,” Prompto says, finally breaking the silence. Noctis hadn’t tried to rush his answer, despite the fear that Prompto would leave him there in their bed. That he would tell him every day he wishes Gladio never made his spell permanent, that he wishes for a body he can never have again. He imagines Prompto telling him he wanted to rip his skin off because he couldn’t stand the mortal feel of it around his bones, even though it was the same skin that Noctis held tight against his own. He thought maybe Prompto would cast it aside and beg for time to turn back.

But the silence breaks, easy like waves on the shore, and Prompto’s voice has never been so sweet. 

“I do not regret a single choice that has led me to you.” The bed shifts as he moves to hold Noctis’ face and bring it close to his own. “I couldn’t, even if I wanted to.” 

The love Noctis feels in that moment is unlike anything he’s ever felt. Like moonlight, sunshine, all things eternal and dear. 

When Prompto kisses him, Noctis feels like forever is theirs to claim, and that there will be no  _ last _ , no ending, no final rites for them, ever after.

**Author's Note:**

> title from peter s beagle himself. [tumblr](http://leviackrmnn.tumblr.com), [twitter](http://twitter.com/peredhils)


End file.
